The Courage Of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship

We are so accustomed these days to one Christian church or ministry falling by the wayside when it comes to Christian orthodoxy on sexual matters. So it comes as a shock when one — especially a major one — takes a firm and uncompromising stand for orthodoxy. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship has done just that. Excerpt:

One of the largest evangelical organizations on college campuses nationwide has told its 1,300 staff members they will be fired if they personally support gay marriage or otherwise disagree with its newly detailed positions on sexuality starting on Nov. 11.

InterVarsity Christian Fellowship USA says that it will start a process for “involuntary terminations” for any staffer who comes forward to disagree with its positions on human sexuality, which holds that any sexual activity outside of a husband and wife is immoral.

Staffers are not being required to sign a document agreeing with the group’s position, and supervisors are not proactively asking employees to verbally affirm it. Instead, staffers are being asked to come forward voluntarily if they disagree with the theological position. When they inform their supervisor of their disagreement, a two-week period is triggered, concluding in their last day. InterVarsity has offered to cover outplacement service costs for one month after employment ends to help dismissed staff with their resumes and job search strategies.

More:

InterVarsity has more than 1,000 chapters on 667 college campuses around the country. More than 41,000 students and faculty were actively involved in organization in the last school year, and donations topped $80 million last fiscal year. The group is focused on undergraduate outreach, but it also has specific programs for athletes, international students, nurses, sororities and fraternities, and others. InterVarsity also hosts the Urbana conference, one of the largest student missionary conferences in the world.

Given how hostile colleges are, and how strongly young adults feel about this issue, taking this stand is likely to be very, very costly, but InterVarsity recognizes the stakes for the integrity of the Christian message. God bless InterVarsity for its impressive courage and steadfastness! As Denny Burk said:

UPDATE: A reader writes that InterVarsity has posted this on its Facebook page tonight:

You may have seen this evening’s article in TIME about InterVarsity.

We’re disappointed that Elizabeth Dias’ headline and article wrongly stated that InterVarsity is firing employees for supporting gay marriage. That is not the case. In fact, InterVarsity doesn’t have a policy regarding employee views on civil marriage.

We know that LGBTQI people have experienced great pain, including much caused by Christians. We also know that we ourselves each need Jesus’ grace daily. So we attempt to walk humbly in this conversation.

We do continue to hold to an orthodox view of human sexuality and Christian marriage, as you can read in our Theology of Human Sexuality Document at the bottom of the article.

That said, we believe Christlikeness, for our part, includes both embracing Scripture’s teachings on human sexuality—uncomfortable and difficult as they may be—as well as upholding the dignity of all people, because we are all made in God’s image.

Some will argue this cannot be done. We believe that we must if we want to be faithful followers of Jesus.

Within InterVarsity and elsewhere in the Church, there are LGBTQI people who agree with this theology, at great personal cost. We are learning together to follow Jesus.

Another reader, a lawyer and a liberal, writes:

This is a smart legal move on their part. Federal law makes it pretty much impossible to take a stance along the lines of, “This is what we believe, but out of compassion and pragmatism we’re willing to be flexible for a certain amount of time, with certain people, and/or in certain situations.” Either you have a blanket policy that applies to all people in all instances, or federal courts will rule that you don’t “really” have a principled position and invalidate the broader policy because of the exceptions. Personally I think that’s unfortunate, because it encourages polarization and an unyielding one-size-fits-all approach to disagreement. But InterVarsity is certainly making the right decision here based on how its commitment to its values and beliefs will be judged in court.

I appreciate this comment for its honesty. I’ve talked to people in religious schools, both Catholic and Protestant, who are being advised by their lawyers to draw clear, bright doctrinal lines right now, and enforce them. If they don’t, the lawyers advise, they are going to have a hard time in court if they get sued. One headmaster I spoke with said his school is facing a hard choice in this regard. When I spoke with him, there was a student in his Christian school whose parents were a lesbian couple. This was irregular in that theologically conservative school, to say the least, but the school had no intention of asking the student to leave, if only because they wanted to provide a loving witness to this student. But the school’s lawyers were warning them that they had better be very careful about this, because if the student and her parents decided they wanted to sue the school for any reason (e.g., it wouldn’t let the girl bring a female date to the prom), their failure to draw a clear policy and enforce it no matter what would count against them, and they could end up being forced by the court to liberalize — this, because they had not clearly enunciated and enforced a clear doctrine. I could tell this headmaster, a conservative Christian, was grieved by this, because he saw a one-size-fits-all, zero-tolerance policy compromising the ministry of that Christian school. But the litigious culture around gay rights was backing his school into a corner. It’s doing it with all Christian churches, schools, and ministries, forcing them to take stands they don’t want to take, or put everything they have at risk from aggressive gay plaintiffs. I am sure that InterVarsity did not want to take the hard stand it has taken, but I am also sure that its lawyers told its leaders that they had no choice.

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72 Responses to The Courage Of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship

First and foremost, I applaud InterVarsity for upholding orthodox Christian values.

That said, I have a serious reservation about the way they worded their rationale. This reservation leads me to question the sincerity of their convictions and the longevity of this new policy.

Let me start by quoting this sentence: “We know that LGBTQI people have experienced great pain, including much caused by Christians.”

I have no quarrel with this sentence. That is not where my reservation lies. On the contrary, I wholeheartedly agree with this statement. LGBT people *have* suffered greatly through the centuries. I must admit that it took me a long time to admit this. Only in the last year or so have I largely overcome my inordinate homophobia, in part by learning more about just how homosexuals have been treated throughout history. Some truly horrific things have been done to them, things so bloodcurdling that I cannot even bring myself to explicitly describe them here. Let me just say that they are things that no human being should ever experience.

The Christian record regarding LGBT people is a sad example of our doing Satan’s work in God’s name.

Here is where I take exception to InterVarsity’s statement, however: “We do continue to hold to an orthodox view of human sexuality and Christian marriage, as you can read in our Theology of Human Sexuality Document at the bottom of the article. That said, we believe Christlikeness, for our part, includes both embracing Scripture’s teachings on human sexuality—uncomfortable and difficult as they may be—as well as upholding the dignity of all people, because we are all made in God’s image.”

I wholeheartedly subscribe to the orthodox view of human sexuality. I firmly believe that sex outside of marriage (defined as a union between one man and one woman) is immoral.

Why do I feel this way? Because I believe that the orthodox Christian view of human sexuality is the view that is most fully compatible with the concept of human dignity. I believe that using one’s sexual organs for any purpose other than reproduction (and, of course, other biologically necessary processes that need not be explicitly mentioned here) is degrading, undignified behavior. To have sex outside of marriage and/or solely for pleasure degrades those who participate in this act.

Likewise, I believe that having healthy sexual organs (or any healthy body parts, for that matter) removed through surgical butchery is an horrific, grotesque practice. It is no less evil than, say, foot binding. Like foot binding, transgender “surgery” constitutes taking something that is normal and whole and deliberately breaking it and rendering it abnormal.

Human beings are superior to other forms of animal life. Thus, we ought to regulate and control our passions and impulses. That is dignified behavior.

That’s where InterVarsity loses me. They write that “Christlikeness […] “includes *both* embracing Scripture’s teachings on human sexuality […] and upholding the dignity of all people.” In other words, they place human dignity and orthodox Christian teachings on sexuality in *opposition* to each other, when in fact *no such opposition exists.*

On the contrary, embracing orthodox Christian teachings on sexuality is PART OF upholding human dignity. Therefore, to promote orthodox Christian views on sexuality is to show true compassion towards LGBT people.

We must not give way to hating LGBT people. Their conditions are disabilities. In addition to having these disabilities, they are *victims* of a depraved culture — even if they don’t realize this.

All of this makes it crucial that they be treated with kindness and love. An essential part of this, though, is affirming orthodox Christian teachings on human sexuality.

To hold up gay marriage or transgenderism as valid is not compassion. It is cruelty — to no less of a degree than the horrific, unspeakable things that were done to LGBT people in the past and still are done to them in some countries.

By creating an artificial opposition between orthodox Christian views on sexuality and upholding human dignity, InterVarsity is implicitly suggesting that orthodox Christian views on sexuality are incompatible with human dignity.

This is a *lie* — for the reasons I have stated.

It is truly sad that InterVarsity implicitly endorses this liberal fallacy, and that their only justification for their ostensibly pro-orthodox Christian position is “because Scripture says so.”

If a given position can *only* be justified by appealing to the will of “the man in the sky,” then that position needs to seriously scrutinized and perhaps discarded.

Fortunately, though, there are clear, objective, secular reasons why the orthodox Christian view of sexuality is correct *and* compatible with human dignity. I hope I’ve done an adequate job laying these reasons out, and I hope InterVarsity and other Christian entities rediscover these truths.

“We know that LGBTQI people have experienced great pain, including much caused by Christians. We also know that we ourselves each need Jesus’ grace daily. So we attempt to walk humbly in this conversation.”

The internal reasoning doesn’t make much sense. They expect their employees to hold a traditional view as to scripture regarding the choice to engage in relations outside of marriage.

But we have no position on the status of marriage regarding the choice of same sex relations in civil unions or marriage. Which by definition holds in contempt the biblical view of marriage.

In essence, their position is utter meaningless. And their line in the sand is more like a line in wet mud.

I have seen a lot of gymnastics regarding the meaning of celibacy. But this move has got to be one of the most convoluted explications of relations I have ever come across.

And the pandering about christians causing pain. If means by holding a christian view of relations — so be it. They are pandering.

“Non-marital sex and divorce are far more prevalent sins in the population and yet here we go again about gay relationships.

Why can’t Christians treat gay rights and same sex marriage like Roman Catholics treat civil divorce? Catholics don’t recognize divorce and yet nobody calls them bigots even when they explicitly bar the divorced and “remarried” from the sacraments”

Hmmmmm . . . I think I can say with confidence that you simply are not aware of what biblical christians believe. Because relations outside of marriage are a “no, no” regardless of the genders involved.

Divorce by the name is not a sin. You seem to hold a view that believing in Christ is determined by the believer when in fact what that means if determined by Christ and for that evangelicals lean heavily ion scripture. As a rule, believing in christ is not determined by cultural trends.

Note for you, few if any christians condone relations outside of marriage even if said practice occurs. It is almost universally recognized as err for christians. They are no marches demanding that christians accept relations outside of marriage. No one that I know is launching a movement that relations outside of marriage are ordained by God.

They push back to the press on the choice of homosexual expression in the church is the advance that it is ordained, or had God’s blessing, when it clearly does not.

Regardless of the russian roullette of dancing soul mates. And should the advances be made in the above, christians who lean on scripture would be bound to reject them.

I am to be celibate until marriage, regardless of what the culture says, does, promotes . . . that upon getting married — said marriage would exist in the frame of a husband, me man and wife, she women.

Interracial marriage is indeed a bad example, but what about interreligious marriages? The Tradition of the Church, both East and West, was fairly absolute on that, based on certain Scriptural passages: no Christian could wed an unbeliever, infidel or heretic. On the few occasions such marriages were contracted (e.g., Protestant Henry of Navarre and Catholic Margaret of Valois) they were profoundly controversial and roundly condemned by church authorities. To this day the heir to the British throne cannot marry a Catholic, and you can find Orthodox traditionalists (though not so much in this country) who reject Orthodox Christians marrying with Catholics or non-Chalcedonians (e.g., Copts) let alone Protestants. Yet overall the restrictions have loosened considerably. Many Protestant churches will solemnize a marriage to anyone as long as a pledge is made to rear the children as Christian. The Catholic and Orthodox churches will generally permit a marriage by a member to another baptized Christian. It’s a pretty clear case of a universal and long-standing tradition that was applied quite rigorously– until eventually it wasn’t.

So you work for IV and your sister is married to a woman. Unless you publicly condemn this in order to “align” yourself with their paper on human sexuality, unless you wills state unequivocally that your sister is wrong and should not be married, you will be let go.

It happened to someone I know (slightly different circumstances, but involved a close family member). She’s worked for the organization for 10 years, three of those years as a volunteer. She’s dedicated and faithful. Her job there supported her two young children. No severance. Her family is scrambling. Yeah, very Christlike.

You guys can celebrate all you want, but I think it’s repellent and heartbreaking. And saddest of all they’re wrecking lives and relationships for political purposes, under the guise of Christianity, as TA states pretty clearly above,what they can’t do with integrity is say “well, the Bible says homosexual behavior is bad, so our hands are tied” while endorsing women in positions of church leadership – a position that is only marginally less new in the sweep of church history.

Just for the record: When you assert there’s no Biblical argument against interracial marriage as there is against homosexuality, you’re speaking from this side of a fairly murky history. About the best you can say of the largest group of Christians, i.e., Catholics, is that the Church never took an official doctrinal position against interracial marriage, and often did, even in the time of colonial slavery, assert that all humans should be respected as human with the right to marry included, which meant slaves had to be permitted to marry and the illegitimate offspring of white men and female slaves had to be provided for by their fathers. That helped mitigate some of the worst social consequences of slavery, but far from all, or even most. Racism still existed in the Catholic world, just as it did in America, and interracial marriages were generally frowned on, as they were in the world of Orthodoxy. I think it’s fair to say the idea that these sorts of “mixed marriages” were wrong was so pervasive, having to quote scripture to prove it rarely, if ever, seemed necessary.

American Protestants, most notably the Evangelical sects, developed clear anti-miscegenist teachings based on scripture (Old and New Testaments), but only the radical few who fought against slavery itself disputed those contentions. In fact, it took almost a century after slavery was outlawed before anybody, North or South, Evangelical or otherwise, disputed the anti-miscegenation laws on the books in most states of the Union. In fact, it was a Catholic priest who had been asked to witness the marriage of a racially mixed couple in California who was the first to officially dispute the law in that state….in 1947.

So what were the Biblical bases for the idea that it’s wrong to mix the race? Basically the whole of Genesis, from the story of Cain and Abel to the sins of Noah’s time (when “the daughters of men married whomever they pleased”) to the story of Isaac and Ishmael (when God arbitrarily favored the former over the later “and their progeny”) through Exodus and the rest of the Old Testament dealings of God with his people can be read as God demanding they keep themselves unsullied by intermarriage. And that IS often the theme in these scriptural passages, although modern biblical scholars interpret them in religious as opposed to racial terms. Unfortunately, there are a plethora of verses in Genesis, Deuteronomy, Exodus, Sirach, and many other books that condemn tribal intermarriage. Historically, they were used to show that God did not want the races to die out via intermingling. Even St. Paul in both Acts 17 and 2 Corinthians was said to teach that God wanted the races to stay within their own boundaries of habitation and, of couse, avoid “unequal yoking.”

The first Christian (Constantinian) edict on the subject pretty much summed all this up: “For just as each animal mates with its own tribe so it is right that each nation should marry and cohabit not with those of another race and speech…” It apparently seemed the natural order.

Again, all the scriptural bases for this thinking have been re-interpreted by modern scholars. The consensus today is overwhelmingly opposed to racist readings of such passages, which I didn’t quote specifically because 1.there are so many, and 2. most people today are used to reading the same in a totally non-racist light. Still, I don’t think it’s wise to forget how easily scripture itself has been misconstrued in the past to justify the status quo.

Those Christians who reject the Intervarsith Christian Felliwship’s viewpoints have every right to form a religious association of its own and use that organization to promote a far more positive and uplifting message.

“Positive and uplifting” are in the eye of the beholder. I think that calling people to follow the truth of the Gospel and the teachings of the Church is extremely positive and uplifting.

It will be interesting to see how many colleges permit IV to continue being active.

That unfortunate ruling in the Hastings Law School case about the Christian Legal Society makes it likely schools could deny space in campus facilities… but schools are not in loco parentis, and may not regulate students presence in off-campus facilities. A lot of religious organizations have buildings right across the street from major public universities.

Like it or not, it’s simply silly to pretend that there isn’t a large group of Christians who support civil gay marriage, or gay marriage without qualification.

Well, it would be a waste of breath to intone solemnly that “those aren’t REAL Christians.” But, the reason there ARE different denominations is that some Christians believe the Bible means this, and other Christians believe the Bible means that. So, you don’t really expect people who solemnly believe something is true to say “oh yeah, but it doesn’t matter, because some people draw different conclusions from the same scriptures,” do you?

I believe that Roman Catholics are good Christians, but that doesn’t mean I will refrain from taking communion at a Protestant service unless I have first been to confession. Nor do I expect to receive communion at a Roman Catholic service merely because “I am a Christian too.”

Honest question: what about the staffer for whom the premise, “any sexual activity outside of a husband and wife is immoral,” doesn’t entail the conclusion, “I resist the legalization of gay marriage”?

That is pathetic nitpicking. From the IVCF point of view, a “husband” is male, and a “wife” is female and the two are married in the eyes of God as well as of the civil law. It may be true that YOU believe that one gay partner can be a “husband” and another the “wife” of that husband, although its more common to see a contestant on Wheel of Fortune saying that HE has been “married for a year to my wonderful husband Steve,” i.e. husband still means male and wife female.

But YOUR opinion guides the way YOU live your life. It doesn’t undermine the integrity of the way IVCF defines what THEY stand for. If its a gay marriage, it is not a husband and wife (in the view IVCF accepts as Christian and Biblical).

Until the 1970s, most evangelicals would have viewed opposing interracial marriage as “Christian orthodoxy.”

Assumes facts not in evidence. Antimiscegenation laws arose as a civil matter for purely secular reasons, which may or may not have had religious gloss draped upon them as extra rationale.

This is good to hear from Rod. Many of you know that in many states it is perfectly legal to fire employees and deny housing on this ground alone. Gays and lesbians are working in many places to change this.

If they are working for a narrow exception that gay is not a reason for employers to discriminate, they have no sympathy from me. If they are willing to join in a broad demand for abolition of “employment at will,” clearly affirming that an employer has no right or authority to make employment decisions that coerce an employee’s personal believes or conduct outside of working hours, then by all means, let’s legislate it.

(I note that if an employee drinks, or smokes a legal joint, or whatever, outside of working hours, but shows up to work impaired, that is entirely fair game for the employer to set rules about, BECAUSE they are IMPAIRED at the time the show up for work.)

If they are truly following Christian orthodoxy on sexual matters, it seems to me they should focus on what I imagine is the far more prevalent sin on college campuses, and that is (heterosexual) fornication.

Why is that even a question? It is obvious from their own statements that they do.

TA may be right that Rod’s choice of words “a firm and uncompromising stand for orthodoxy” is a bit misplaced. That is because the variant of Protestant Christianity IVCF embraces is indeed significantly different from the doctrines embraced by Orthodox Christians, by Roman Catholics, as it is different from the beliefs of the Metropolitan Baptist Church, the Unitarian Universalist Church, and the United Church of Christ.

But, there is no reason a Christian who denies that homosexual unions are acceptable to Christian teaching therefore MUST deny that women can enter the priesthood. There is no reason this side of eternity why a Biblically literate Christian cannot come to conclusions on one question that accord with, e.g., Orthodoxy, and on another come to a conclusion that differs from Orthodoxy.

Even allowing for the fact that Rod spelled orthodoxy with a small-o, the fact remains, Christians are not required to adhere to any given orthodox mold. IVCF believes that the Bible means what IVCF believes it means.

Yes, people made those arguments– but they were (relatively) few in numbers. When Rod or others reference the Christian Tradition they are referencing something that goes all the way back to the Gospels and Epistles, embracing almost two millennia and a multitude of different nations. The sun does not rise in the Atlantic and set in the Pacific, and history does not begin in Jamestown. You will search far and wide to find any objection to interracial or interethnic marriage outside in the vast bulk of Christian history.

Then, after saying that, you basically agreed with what I said. Whether you like it or not, most Christians in the West long believed that interracial marriage was a sin. In fact, they believed in that with such conviction that they petitioned state legislatures to pass laws against it. In fact, my Dutch Calvinist forbears instituted Apartheid, and believed that they were following clear Scriptural warrant in doing so.

Yes, we reject all of that now, and rightly so. But it proves a valid point: The mere fact that Christians have believed something for a very long time does not mean that they were right in doing so.

I’ve noted that I believe that certain forms of sodomy are sinful. Even so, I can easily see how good Christians can arrive at other positions on that question. So, it’s something on which I’m content to permit graceful disagreement. I certainly don’t think people should lose their jobs over such a secondary question of faith and life.

For the record, I’m a Protestant of a Dutch Calvinist persuasion (second-generation Dutch-American). As a Protestant, I believe that there is nothing more sacrosanct than freedom of conscience. Thus, I am loath to bind the conscience of others in the absence of unambiguous Scriptural warrant. On this question, I don’t see Scripture as setting forth such an unambiguous warrant. For example, I’ve considered the “gentile inclusion” argument, and, while I’m not entirely persuaded by it, it’s sufficiently reasonably to prevent me from determining that the question has an unambiguous answer. Moreover, Scripture is silent on the question of female-female relations. (Most interpreters view the reference to “women” in Romans 1 as referring to women who are taking a dominant role in sex with a submissive male.)

I’m probably also influenced by my Dutch upbringing. Society works best in an environment that relies more heavily on implicit moralism than explicit moralism, and expects personal responsibility. I once remember someone asking my dad how he remained so thin and healthy. he responded, “I eat small quantities and exercise every day.” Then, again, that may explain why no one talks about “Dutch cuisine.” Even so, I very much love being Dutch. It shapes everything I do and think.

Too many on your side lament the fact that this battle is now taking place in the courts. They whine about it, and then arrive at a point where they engage in denial and defeatism. They become the suckers who apply their ever-so-pure Marquess of Queensbury Rules (public opinion, the accountability of elected officials) to the bar-fight of judicial activism and those who instigate it.

IVCF, however, gets it. You should be really grateful for having them in your corner.

I’ve never hidden my admiration for the skill and ruthlessness of LGBTQ activists, and their attention to detail.

As a gay man: this is exactly what religious organizations should do. It’s all or nothing. And yes, I expect them to pay a price with young adults, but they will not be able to say that it was a price that was forced upon them. They will make their case and see how much of the population agrees with them. And one way or the other, the world will go on.

Problem: from the ground up, the idea that the LGBTQ community must necessarily be the church’s enemies.

There are LGBTQ people who hate the church. In my experience they do so because they grew up in it and suffered hugely from the constant dehumanization and judgment unconsciously perpetrated by Christians who are sensitized against them and largely ignorant of their experiences or even the nature of LGBTQ identity. I have yet to meet a conservative Christian who has experienced anything like the kind of persecution from mainstream culture that is par for the course for being a queer or trans kid in a conservative church that’s blindly trying its level best to be “loving.” Sincere beliefs, in these cases, are nearly always hopelessly mixed with massive amounts of misinformation, not to mention inexorable dogmatism without mercy. If there’s one thing every LGBTQ person in North America knows, it’s that conservative Christianity looks at them and sees sin–first, last, and foremost.

Despite that, a significant percentage of LGBTQ people in America are in fact Christian. (Fact worth noting here: identifying LGBTQ is about who you fall in love with and/or how you experience your mental and physical gender. It has nothing to do with what you’ve done.) Some LGBTQ Christians hold conservative positions on sexual points of doctrine, and some hold liberal positions. Most if not all of them have walked through a time of immense spiritual darkness and conscientious conflict to get to where they stand, regardless of where that is. All the ones I know have way more faith than I am able to maintain, watching the merciless way the church behaves toward the outcasts it created in the first place.

When a ministry like InterVarsity “makes a stand” like this, I’m afraid I feel most for the already-suffering LGBTQ college kids who have been attending InterVarsity fellowships, many of whom will not have come out because they will not have known who they can trust.

If it were my job on the line and I were torn between trying to provide for my own kid and feeling the need to be courageous enough to speak what I believe for the sake of the LGBTQ kids out there … Lord, have mercy.

I respect conservative moral convictions, though I have been through the utterly devastating battle of conscience and come out the other side. Not everyone comes to my conclusion. I understand going with history instead of modernity in a case like this. I respect the convictions. I cannot respect the way they have been handled, nor the panicky “They’re persecuting us” that fails so blatantly to see who cast the first stone.

I am furious that litigation may be forcing InterVarsity’s hand. Unfortunately for them, I’m also furious that societal mistreatment of LGBTQ people–often in the name of religious belief–has forced LGBTQ people to turn to the law to defend their rights. The tables are turning, and that’s a real shame–an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth may be old-covenant biblical, but it’s a dangerous principle.

I’ve said enough … especially given that where most conservatives are concerned, there seems to be nothing anyone can say. God grant us all more peace than we have now.

“So what were the Biblical bases for the idea that it’s wrong to mix the race? Basically the whole of Genesis, from the story of Cain and Abel to the sins of Noah’s time (when “the daughters of men married whomever they pleased”) to the story of Isaac and Ishmael (when God arbitrarily favored the former over the later “and their progeny”) through Exodus and the rest of the Old Testament dealings of God with his people can be read as God demanding they keep themselves unsullied by intermarriage.”

I am not going to wade into the issue of color marriages in the US save to say, many states had no such laws even if the ethic existed.

But your use of scripture is no less abusive than those you claimed it to support barring marriages of people of different colors. Regardless of what scriptures people used to support their position.

Skin color is not an issue in scripture at any level of scripture. Te references you are talking about are about faith and practice. The same is discouraged in the new testament. Christians are told to marry people of faith — christian o christian.

Skin color never enters into it. And the passage that is leaned on for all things color is in Genesis 1, the curse. Which no one can identify, was noted by whites to b black skin. In reality it is just as likely to have been white skin or club feet.

But on marriage an all theirs issues scriptural color is a nonfactor.

The choice to engage in same sex behavior however is completely at odds wit scripture based on the behavior

If their beliefs didn’t involve recognizing him as Messiah, rather a lot of people I would think.

Mathew CH 10

32 “Therefore everyone who [z]confesses Me before men, I will also confess [aa]him before My Father who is in heaven. 33 But whoever [ab]denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven.

34 “Do not think that I came to [ac]bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; 36 and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household.

37 “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. 38 And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. 39 He who has found his [ad]life will lose it, and he who has lost his [ae]life for My sake will find it.

I doubt that litigation is forcing IV’s hand. IV’s hand is being forced by proto-fundamentalist evangelicals like Burk who are trying to purge various evangelical organizations of anyone who doesn’t sign up for their narrow, misogynistic view of Christianity.

Take, for example, the efforts last year by Burk and Owen Strachan to purge the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) of those who disagree with them on this question. Never mind that ETS, despite what its name may imply, is merely an organization of scholars who study the Biblical text and do so from a particular perspective. In fact, a fair number of its members are Barth scholars from various mainline denominations. In its long history, ETS has intentionally avoided taking sides on particular theological and political controversies. But, within the past few years, certain fundamentalist-leaning “scholars” have sought to swell the ETS membership ranks with like-minded people with the intent of taking over the organization and purging it of everyone who disagrees with them on various theological and political issues. The goal is to turn ETS into a fundamentalist mouthpiece, effectively destroying the organization. In short, the goal is to destroy big-tent evangelicalism, and get rid of organizations like ETS and IV–evangelical organizations that have traditionally been rather open to engagement with conservative mainliners. In fact, when I was a student, IV held its events at a mainline church.

Evangelicalism has always had certain tensions between its more moderate elements and its more conservative elements. It’s been that way since the 1960s. But the two groups have always been committed to unity, as their differences related to secondary and tertiary issues. But with the emergence of a “neo-fundamentalism” under Al Mohler, the conservatives are creating an ever-longer list of issues on which they require agreement as a condition of fellowship. So, they’re forcing organizations like ETS and IV to cater exclusively to the neo-fundamentalists or face a withdrawal of all support from neo-fundamentalist churches. That’s their prerogative, of course. But it’s hard to see how it advances the Gospel.

From my experience in IV, only about 25-30% of its members are of a neo-fundamentalist persuasion. That’s a sizable enough chunk that a withdrawal would hurt the organization. Even so, most of us who attended IV did so because we weren’t interested in fellowshipping in a neo-fundamemntalist echo chamber, such as what one often finds at CRU or RUF. besides, when I was in IV, many of the neo-fundamentalists were not there for fellowship, but were instead there to stir up trouble and to advocate neo-fundamentalist talking points.

Even so, this will be the end of IV. I view premarital sex as a sin, but something on the order of overeating. I’m also of a generation that just isn’t grossed out by gay sex. I liked IV because it didn’t take strong stands on Culture War issues, and focused more on inculcating wisdom than exercising moral paternalism. It was also a place where one could ask hard questions, and have those questions treated as the hard questions that they are.

I find it hilarious that neo-fundamentalists complain so loudly about political correctness. I’ve never known any environment so intellectually stifling and personally infantilizing as neo-fundamentalist circles. I attended RUF (Reformed University Fellowship) meetings a few times when I was in grad school. Those folks make the SJWs look broad-minded. The complaints about elitism are hilarious too. The neo-fundamentalists are seeking to purge their organizations of anyone who dares to express a nuanced thought, and then turn around and complain that such people don’t deign to associate with their organizations.

“There are LGBTQ people who hate the church. In my experience they do so because they grew up in it and suffered hugely from the constant dehumanization and judgment unconsciously perpetrated by Christians who are sensitized against them and largely ignorant of their experiences or even the nature of LGBTQ identity.”

Christians can be mean to their fellows. But a reference to “unconsciously perpetrated” has me a bit puzzled. In otherwords, if I get your meaning, my not knowing that someone I the congregation had chosen same sex expression, and understood that I thought the matter in error, having caused them hurt is my fault, such that i should make atonement.

No christian, anywhere at anytime need make atonement for following Christ, even if that following hurts another’s feelings. One cn empathize with the pain, but that does not require penance, in my view.

The term falling in love is convenient, but it’s not really accurate is it? While there are a lot of factors at play, love is still a choice and how we choose to express that is also a choice. What we give ourselves over to is a choice.
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“Mathew CH 10

32 “Therefore everyone who [z]confesses Me before men, I will also confess [aa]him before My Father who is in heaven. 33 But whoever [ab]denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven . . .”

Not single scripture has anything to do with the hiring an firing of anyone, unrelated to faith and practice. Jesus never advocated the firing if anyone who was involved in ministry as it related to him.

In the diary of John Woolman, a mid 1700s Quaker in New Jersey whose Quaker employer bought and sold slaves, both African and Scottish (“my master had purchased some Scotch manservants and brought them to Mt. Holly to sell”), there is a conversation where someone told him that dark skin was the Mark of Cain. Woolman replied that since all people now alive are descended from Noah, the Mark of Cain is equally present in all of us, or none of us. (Woolman believed Noah was descended from Seth, and not Cain, but Talmudic scholars sometimes assert that there had been enough generations for descendants of both to be in Noah’s family tree).

When a ministry like InterVarsity “makes a stand” like this, I’m afraid I feel most for the already-suffering LGBTQ college kids who have been attending InterVarsity fellowships, many of whom will not have come out because they will not have known who they can trust.

What has been quoted here from IVCF is pretty clear that they accept as members and fellow believers people who have LGBTQ feelings and longings, who adhere to a Christian perspective that they should not act on those feelings. In fact they spoke of supporting those who are struggling with exactly that perspective.

There are of course LGBTQ people who deny that this is necessary, who insist that God loves them just as they are and want them to be happily married to someone of the same sex. They won’t find a home in IVCF. They can form Collegiate Christian Rainbow Fellowship, or whatever they want, and it would have the same First Amendment standing as IVCF. What does God think of it all? He’ll let us know when he chooses. Meanwhile, we all see through a glass darkly.

(I left out my signature “QWERTY” here, because we are, for once, talking about individual persons, not about ideologies, alliances, and enforcement squads.)

I don’t see how this applies to excluding the children of same sex parents form Christian schools. The children are not in an immoral lifestyle; the parents are. And if we have a chance to teach the kids a better way, we should do it. We do have to teach the kids not to nag their parents about their parents’ “sinful lifestyle,” but keep quiet; but there will be plenty of kids with sinner parents in an Christian school. (actually, all of them)